THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 21, 2013
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Valley youth village as an example of
what Zionism ought to be: a place that
would give a home to the homeless,
provide roots to the uprooted, and re-
store meaning to life. Ben Shemen would
offer harmony to the children there and
to an era that had lost all harmony.
Six months after Lehmann estab-
lished the youth village, an earthquake
demolished much of the old town of
Lydda and killed scores of residents.
Lehmann rushed to the city to attend
to the survivors. His work had a pro-
found impact, and over the years he
made friends among Lydda's Palestin-
ian gentry and among the dignitaries
of the neighboring Arab villages of Ha-
ditha, Dahariya, Gimzu, Daniyal, Deir
Tarif, and Bayt Nabala. He saw to it
that the villagers walking to and from
Lydda in the summer heat could have
cool water and refreshing shade at a
fountain that he built for them at the
gate of the Zionist youth village. Leh-
mann instructed the local clinic to give
medical assistance to Palestinians who
needed it. He insisted that the students
of Ben Shemen, aged ten to eighteen,
be taught to respect their neighbors.
Almost every weekend, the students
went on trips to the villages and fre-
quently visited the schools and the
market in Lydda. Arab musicians and
dancers were invited to participate in
the youth village's festivals.
In 1947, just before the establish-
ment of Israel, Lehmann asked the di-
rector Helmar Lerski to shoot a film
about a young boy, a Holocaust survi-
vor, who arrives from Europe and finds
a life, and a purpose, in Ben Shemen.
Lerski agreed, and called the film
"Adama" ("Land"). Lehmann con-
ceived of the film as a fund-raising tool,
portraying an almost impossibly idyllic
commune: boys and girls who had
barely escaped Europe living in a pro-
gressive, democratic educational estab-
lishment; a kind of convalescent home
for the uprooted youth of an uprooted
people in the land of the Bible. Here
were young Hebrew shepherds herd-
ing sheep on the craggy, ancient hills
between Haditha and Dahariya. Here
were young weavers spinning yarn on
spindles as if they were French or Ger-
man villagers who had been living on
the land for generations. Here was
a community of orphans living in a
Euro-Palestinian village culture that
was at peace with the land it had just
descended upon. On Friday evenings,
the children wore white shirts and
gathered around tables to light candles.
Some played Bach, some sang hymns,
some recounted Jewish legends or tales
from Tolstoy.
But, just after Lerski finished shoot-
ing his film, an inner tension between
Zionism's Lydda Valley enterprise and
the Palestinian city of Lydda became
apparent. In February, 1947, the Brit-
ish decided to leave the Holy Land and
let the United Nations determine its
fate. In June, an eleven-member U.N.
special committee arrived in Palestine
and, while touring the country, visited
Ben Shemen and the Lydda Valley.
The members concluded that there was
no chance that the Jews and the Arabs
of Palestine could coexist as one nation;
they recommended dividing the land
into two states. In November, the U.N.
General Assembly endorsed the parti-
tion plan and, in Resolution 181, called
for the establishment of two states, a
Jewish state and an Arab state. The
Arab League and the Arabs of Pales-
tine were not willing to accept Jewish
sovereignty in any part of Palestine and
rejected the resolution.
In December, 1947, a seven-car con-
voy of Jewish soldiers from the
Haganah, the precursor of the Israel
Defense Forces, en route to Ben She-
men, was attacked by Arab fighters.
Thirteen soldiers were slain. A few
months later, most of the residents of
the youth village were evacuated from
the Lydda Valley in buses, escorted by
British armored vehicles. By April,
1948, Lehmann's youth village had be-
come a military post.
In May, the armies of Egypt, Syria,
Transjordan, Iraq, and Lebanon in-
vaded Palestine, determined to crush
the young Jewish state. In early July,
David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first Prime
Minister, set in motion Operation Lar-
lar, designed to conquer Lydda, Ramle,
Latrun, and Ramallah. On July 10th
and 11th, the 8th Brigade of the Israel
Defense Forces took the northern parts
of the valley, including the villages of
Deir Tarif and Haditha, and the inter-
national airport, near Tel Aviv. The
élite Yiftach Brigade took the southern
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